From a comprehensive to an externalising approach? An analysis of EU documents on return over four decades

Returning migrants without an authorisation to stay has become a strong policy focus in the EU’s migration policy since the ‘migration crisis’ of 2015/2016. Over the last years, the European Commission has put forth a plethora of initiatives to make the return of unwanted migrants more ‘effective’, persuade non-EU countries to cooperate on return and position return as an integral part of EU and member states’ asylum policies. Originally part of an effort to keep close ties with cooperation partners in non-EU countries, the topic of migration control, and in particular return, have become more and more contentious over the last years, especially for countries in the Global South. While return policies and their contestation have been the focus of much research, we thus far lack an understanding of the Commission’s approach to return policy. This paper aims to fill this gap by analysing, for the first time, the total of Commission policy documents related to migration externalisation and return using text-as-data methods. Covering about 200 documents issued between 1980 and 2022, we use a structural topic model to uncover shifts in policy focus over time and in response to crises or major political changes at the domestic level. We find that the Commission’s approach has shifted from meeting non-EU countries’ migration interests to externalising member states’ demand for returning more migrants. This, in turn, implies a changing role for the Commission, from an advocate of fundamental rights to an institution focused on facilitating member states global interests.